July 26, 2012

These relationships do more than distinguish professional services from standardized commodities. They also help align professional service marketing with the contemporary belief that marketing is more about developing relationships than promoting goods and services.

Businesses use a variety of marketing communications to connect with potential consumers of goods and services. Once a connection has been made, the next step is to engage interested consumers in some kind of a process leading to the decision to purchase a specific product or service.

This engagement becomes a relationship between a business and potential consumers interested in the goods or services that the business supplies. This relationship helps the business learn more about what the potential consumer need, want and expect. It also helps potential consumers understand how the business can help them.

In practice, this relationship takes the form of a conversation between the business and its interested consumers.

Ta da…there it is: the alignment between marketing as building relationships and professional service marketing. And what an alignment it is. It’s a perfect match.

The Marketing Conversation

What is a marketing conversation to many other businesses, is the same as the first stage of getting to know our professional service clients.

Following this approach allows us to see marketing in a whole new light.

Instead of struggling to understand conventional marketing concepts like advertising, promotion and sales, we can do what we do well: interact with people who need our help. We simply start the conversation, ideally as soon as connect with potentially ideal clients.

As an added bonus, the relationship-focused approach narrows your marketing challenge to just one: connecting with potentially ideal clients.

And this is where five basic marketing strategies, which might be called the professional service marketing mix, come into play. These strategies include: